The Gallaudet University Library Deaf Collections & Archives shared these photos on Facebook November 29, 2018, saying: “Throwback Thursday: The Library Prank. On a January morning in 1940, students and faculty discovered that pranksters had entered the library in College Hall (now the President’s Office) during the night and turned all the books around so their spines faced the wall. The stunt must have required multiple people, since there were too many books for one person to do alone. However, despite rumors over the years, no one ever came forward and admitted they were the ones behind this prank — and since it was almost 80 years ago, the original pranksters have probably taken the secret with them. The first photo shows the library as it was initially discovered, with all the books reversed and several students and faculty milling around. The second and third photos show students who were enlisted to clean up the mess and put the books back in proper order.”

Oh mah gahd, Starr Lackawanna, the librarian who appears in Daniel Pinkwater’s novels The Artsy-Smartsy Club and Looking for Bobowicz, is based on a real person, Starr LaTronica, currently of Brattleboro, Vermont! Which, come to think of it, totally sounds like a place in a Pinkwater book, alongside Hoboken and Hogboro.

Thanks, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt!

Marian Engel’s novel Bear, first published in 1976, is about a love affair between a librarian and a bear.

Yes it is.

If you would like to read it, it may be available in a library near you.

Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro.

T-rexes invade the library of the University of Texas at Austin, May 2017.

The staff of The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) call our attention to some pretty fabulous 18th century doodles by Richard Beale, including this chicken in trousers. Thanks, Tom Lovell!

Book-return machines in libraries in England are spitting out poem-receipts. Electric Lit has lots of terrific examples. Thanks, Kathy Randall and AARP Magazine!

Artist Andy Knowlton has written and designed covers for 23 books in the imaginary library described in Richard Brautigan’s novel The Abortion: An Historical Romance. In the novel, the narrator looks after a library full of “unwanted” books donated by their authors, including:

My Trike by Chuck
Leather Clothes and the History of Man by S.M. Justice
Love Always Beautiful by Charles Green
The Stereo and God by the Reverend Lin­coln Lincoln
Pancake Pretty by Barbara Jones
He Kissed All Night by Susan Margar
Moose by Richard Brautigan
It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal by Rod Keen
Your Clothes are Dead by Les Steinman
Jack, the Story of a Cat by Hilda Simp­son
The Culinary Dostoevsky by James Fallon
My Dog by Bill Lewis
Hombre by Canton Lee
Vietnam Victory by Edward Fox
Printer’s Ink by Fred Sinkus
Bacon Death by Marsha Paterson
UFO Versus CBS by Susan DeWitt
The Egg Layed Twice by Beatrice Quinn Porter
Breakfast First by Samuel Humber
The Quick Forest by Thomas Funnell
The Need for Legalized Abortion by Doctor O
Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms by Mrs. Charles Fine Adams
The Other Side of My Hand by Harlow Blade

Mentioned in the book but not written/designed (yet?) by Knowlton:

Sam Sam Sam by Patricia Evens Summers
A History of Nebraska by Clinton York

Images of all the book covers are available at Knowlton’s Facebook page.

Thanks, Dina Wood, for bringing this project to my attention — I love it!!

The Alexandria-Monroe Public Library in Indiana says: “We’d like to remind patrons to not attach googley eyes to books. It can cause damage to the cover and in this case haunt our nightmares for all eternity. Thank you. — with Creepy Kid.”

Thanks, Sarah Milteer!

According to Livia Gershon’s article “Being a Victorian Librarian Was Oh-So-Dangerous,” Melvil Dewey “predicted that female librarians would have trouble doing the job because of poor health.” Indeed, at the turn of the last century the Brooklyn Public Library Association proposed a “seaside rest home” for broken-down librarians.

When Diane Westerfield forwarded this article to me, I responded that maybe Dewey had the idea that librarians might suffer from nervous exhaustion or whatever because he was sexually harassing them and perhaps there was some emotional fallout from that. Diane then found this hair-raising portrait of Dewey available at Find-A-Grave. The look in his eyes! Yike!

The Purple Syllabus, created by “Prince fans affiliated with the University of Minnesota Libraries in conjunction with the Prince From Minneapolis Symposium,” is awesome.

Thanks, Kris Kanthak!